May 2.

realm. A case already existed for the exercise of their authority. A clergyman of London, named Sharp, animadverted in the pulpit on the character of some recent conversions to the Church of Rome. James ordered the Bishop of London to suspend him from preaching. The Bishop replied that he had no canonical power to take that step till there should have been a trial and conviction. The King persisted; and the Bishop was cited before the new court, who sentenced him to a suspension from his functions, to last during the pleasure of the King. It in fact lasted to the end of the King's reign. The Bishop, who had begun life as an officer in the army, retained the spirit of his early days. He had recently given offence to the King by a patriotic course in Parliament, and had been removed from the employments of Privy Counsellor and of Dean of the Royal Chapel.1

Dismissal of

ries from office.

Other vigorous developments of the King's policy soon followed. The Earl of Sunderland, who had Protestant To- made a friend of Petre, and who already gave signs of a disposition to be reconciled to the ancient Church, was made President of the Council while retaining his office of Secretary of State. Rochester, who, with all his faults, was animated with his father's devotion to the Church of England, and who was a man of far too great ability and resolution to be a cipher in any government, was, with many professions of sorrow on the part of the King, dismissed from the high post of Lord Treasurer; and, in circumstances which will presently be related, his elder brother, Lord Clarendon, was at the same time discharged from the great office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The Treasury was intrusted to a commission, with Godolphin at the head, an expert and diligent statesman, "never in the way and never out of the way," by whom the King knew that he would not 1 Trial of Bishop Compton, in State Trials, XI. 1123-1166.

be embarrassed. The Chancellor, Jeffreys, stuck fiercely to his Protestantism; but this was probably only as a cloak assumed that he might be able more effectually to promote the King's designs, by not appearing to abet him through any influence of religious sympathy.

The course of King James was clear before him. With the solemn approval of the law, uttered with its most august authority, he had vindicated his prerogative to do away with the laws of England. By dispensations from the Test Act, he had called Papists to his council, and had taken the army, the corporations, and the judiciary into his hands. By the establishment of the High Commission Court, he had brought the Church under his feet. No Parliament was sitting, and there was no necessity for him to convoke one; for the base complaisance of the last Parliament secured to him a generous revenue, and, in case of exigency, the exchequer of the rich King of France was at his disposal, on terms which it would not be difficult to arrange.

But, after all, one part of what appeared so safe a calculation failed. The people, high and low, were servile; for they were incensed at the misbehavior of the Whigs, and the Whigs were the representatives of liberal principles. The Church was servile, as it always had been since Henry the Eighth and Cranmer fastened it to the car of the State. But the Church was composed of men, of whom a large portion valued their faith, and all valued more or less their livelihood, which depended upon the Church's safety and ascendency.

To this solid obstacle in the way of his designs, the King was fortunately blind. This was not for want of

King.

warning. In quarters to which it would seem Popish fanatinatural for him to look for advice, his true pol- cism of the icy in the circumstances was well understood. Had he been capable of being instructed by the lessons of prudence, it is by no means unlikely that he might

in the end have accomplished his ains, and subverted the liberties of England. If he could not prevail upon Parliament to repeal the Test Act, the courts had decreed that he might legally dispense with its operation; and for all practical purposes this sufficed; it enabled him to fill the Council, the army, the courts, and the municipal offices with his creatures. If he could not get the Habeas Corpus Act effaced from the statute-book, it would be but a bloodless phantom when Roman Catholics should fill the tribunals which were to execute or disregard the writ. The Catholic courts of Spain and the Empire, as strongly as the Protestant power in the Low Countries, urged the King to moderation. The Catholic potentates had political reasons for their course. Independently of their clear perception that precipitancy would defeat the King's designs within his own realm, they desired to attach England to the Continental league against the King of France; and to that end it was necessary that there should be a good understanding between the King and the Parliament. The Pope concurred in their policy, and sent over a nuncio to endeavor to enforce it on the King. The Queen was earnestly of the same mind. Of the members of the Roman Catholic communion within the realm, the most important by reason of wealth, station, and character used their influence in the same direction.

But the headstrong nature of James brooked no delay, and approved no indirections. Nor was the King of France inattentive to the conditions of the time. His able and watchful envoys in England were instructed on the one hand to stimulate the King, and on the other to use all opportunities to arouse the people's jealousy against him. The order of Jesuits was now disaffected to the Papal see, and obsequious to France. Louis employed the Jesuit Petre in England; an enthusiast for his religion; a person of ability and courage, and trained in

the arts which have given to his order such a mysterious. mastery over the minds of men. The King of England, besides making Petre a Privy Counsellor, admitted him to his most intimate confidence; gave him apartments in his palace; solicited the Pope to make him a Cardinal; and, as was believed, was ready to appoint him Archbishop of Canterbury, could he have prevailed on the Pope to dispense with the rule which excludes members. of the regular orders from the episcopate. The impetuous bigotry of Father Petre, so welcome to the King, was seconded by a few of the Catholic nobles, of whom the most prominent was the brutal and profligate Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel.

Church of

The King's dismissal of his brothers-in-law from his counsels proved to be, what at the time it was His encroachinterpreted as being, a sure prognostic of a reso- ments on the lute policy of despotism. His personal attach- England. ment to them had appeared to be strong. In the time of his low fortunes during his brother's reign, he had been indebted to them for the most important services. They were among the most eminent of the representatives of Protestant Toryism, and to dismiss them from his favor was to grieve the most powerful class of hitherto unscrupulous supporters of the throne. They had no objection to any arbitrary measures of his, except such as touched the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. The only cause of their disgrace was, that they would not renounce the Church which had been re-established by their father. If they could not be tolerated, what adherent of that Church could expect to escape the royal frown? How hostile to English liberties, civil and ecclesiastical, must be the counsels which even these pliable statesmen could not be permitted to share!

The King could not be blind to the discontent which was spreading among Churchmen. He imagined that some support might be obtained from the Protestant

1687.

dissenting sects; and there was an appearance of consistency and of generosity in extending to the sectaries the toleration which as yet was all that he professed to claim for the members of his own communion. The laws of England were in his way in the one case as much as in the other. But he had made up his mind that the laws should not obstruct him. He issued a procApril 4. lamation suspending the exaction of all penalties for religious offences, and forbidding the imposition of religious oaths or tests as qualifications for office. Numbers of the Non-conformist sects-Presbyterians, Baptists, Independents, Quakers-fell into the snare, and approached the King with addresses of thanks for his enlightened and gracious lenity. But in all these bodies (except perhaps that of the Quakers, who were ruled by William Penn) there were persons, and those generally of the best judgment and greatest weight in their circle, who distrusted the toleration which they were invited to share with Papists, and chose rather, in the imminent peril, to stand by the national Church which disowned, despised, and distressed them.

His attack on the University of

When a bold policy had been determined upon, a precipitate and insolent boldness might well seem expedient, as tending both to depress the courage of opponents, and to anticipate the conferences and organizations which might create embarrassment. The Cambridge. war with the Church was begun with a little skirmish, suitable to try the spirit of the enemy. The King sent an order to the University of Cambridge to admit one Francis, a Benedictine monk, to the degree of Master of Arts. The University answered. by a petition, representing that this measure would open a way for all sorts of religionists into councils which had in charge the interests of the University and the Church. The King persisted; and the ViceChancellor, for his continued contumacy, was tried before